Thursday, August 12, 2010

An illegal immigrant in Washington, D.C. awaiting a deportation ruling got charged with killing a nun and critically injuring two others in a drunken driving crash. The illegal immigrant has been arrested by county police two times before and charged with drunken driving. This case is being criticized because of how immigration enforcement is put into action.

Police say, twenty-three-year-old Carlos Martinelly Montano, is charged with drunken driving, involuntary manslaughter and felony driving on a revoked license after the accident on Sunday. Montano, from Bolivia, had been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement at least two times before this incident occurred. "The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that Montano was released in 2008, pending an immigration judge's review of his case. As of August 2010, a judge had not ruled on his deportation".

Montano's crash comes at a poor time for all illegal immigrants in the United States with regard to what is happening in Arizona with immigration reform. Now, there has been a mass call for immigration enforcement reform which could mean a number of things, especially in terms of how fast deportations are expedited. "A local official in the Virginia suburb where the crash happened and a congressman from another state have criticized federal officials for not removing the suspect from the country after previous arrests, and even U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano questioned why his deportation was taking so long. A spokeswoman for the nuns' order, meanwhile, said they're upset that the tragedy is being politicized", reported the AP.

The chairman of Prince William County's Board of Supervisors, Corey Stewart, says that he believed that Montano's accident is a clear indication of the need for federal immigration reform. "We handed him over to the feds assuming he would be deported, but instead federal authorities released him back into the neighborhood and he killed a nun," Stewart said. "We feel like we are beating our heads against the wall."